Something Fishy Charters

After a long winter and a very cold spring fish are starting to arrive off the Sussex coast,this weekend i had desent catches of smoothound up to 13lb and a very nice late cod of 16.5lb which fell to a crab bait south east of the Nab tower.I tryed for black bream on both sat and sun but as yet they have not shown,i am confidant they will be here in the next week probably the next set of spring tides.The pattern of Chichester Harbour this year seems to be everything is about 3/4 weeks late due to the still cold water off the coast.The water temperature is 2/3 degrees below that of last year it does not sound much but its 25% lower.The fishing should go from strength to strength from now on with bream,mackerel,tope and bass all heading our way ,lets hope the weather is kind and we can get to sea regularly during the coming months.

Well the Warrior our new 38` Aqua Star has turned up from north Wales to Chichester Harbour,she is currently out of the water having a refit which i must say is dragging on a bit when all i want is to get out and start the fishing season.warrior is powered by two 300hp perkins sabre engines giving her a top speed of 22knt,however cruising speed will be more like 16knts,she will be fitted with a mix of Ray marine and Furuno electronics.I am fitting a fixed live bait tank for keeping sandeels alive over night for those bass trips and larger ice boxes for keeping the catch in tip top condition.

I am expecting to have the warrior ready by 2nd week of April if all goes well,She will fish parties of up to 10 comfortably and 12 on the half day trips the price will work out about £45/head and £25 on the half days depending on the size of group.She also has the convienance of a microwave oven,electric kettel,flush loo and heating for the winter.With the extra speed i am planing to travel further out on the smaller tides to try some of the less fished ground in the channel.If you fancy a trip drop me a line and i will sort out a date,any day soon we should see the first of the black bream,the larger males are always the first to show so dont delay give me call and try fishing from Chichester harbour.

After some months of deliberation we have decided to purchase another charter boat to give us the ability to cater for larger groups ,up to 24 people.We can also offer corporate hospitality, film work, bird watching or any other marine based activity.The new boat is the same make as Shaw thing II,she is a twin engined 38 foot Aqua star with a top speed of 22knots.We now have the ability to fish further out in the channel and can offer  wrecking,bassing,sharking and trips to the Brittle star banks.This increases the number of full time charter boats  based at  Itchenor in Chichester Harbour to four.Giveing us the potential to host small competitions etc .With the picturesque scenery, ample parking,good pub and fantastic selection of fishing to be had its definitely worth a visit.The other bonus is during the season chichester harbour has some great fishing within the estuary ,so if its two rough to go to sea there is no need to cancel ,we can offer you a half day in the harbour.Look forward to seeing our old customers and new this summer.regards adam

As i am busy preparing Shaw thing and Tia maria for the 2010 fishing season,i have time to reflect on last years fishing.We were off to a good start with fine weather in the spring allowing us to get out to the offshore sand banks to find the exciting Blonde Rays,each trip we managed to find good fish with the best one of the year weighing in at 28.5lbs followed by a 25lb er.There were more smaller fish on the ground last year so hope fully this was a sigh of good fishing to come,almost all the blondes caught by anglers these days go back which helps keep the stock healthy.

   The black bream showed early with our first fish arriving late march,the first of the bream are always the bigger male fish with their splendid electric blue colouring we did not catch any monsters but fish to 3lb were common with bags of up to ninety in a day.As the bream were coming on the smoothounds arrived inshore giving an alternative to the light sport fishing for bream,i thought it was a good year for the hounds, not so much in size although double figure fish were common but in the length of the season,they fished right through into late august with good fish still coming up through out september,our best fish of the year was just short of 20lb.

From early may we started hunting for tope my personal favorite fishing of the year,the last two seasons had not been as good as hoped for but now commercial fishing for tope has been banned under the shark coservation program i have been hopeing the tope numbers would return to the days of when  30 s and 40 s was a common days catch.There were some big fish hooked and landed in excess of 50lb but ourselves only managed fish to around 40lb with catches around 10 to 20 fish a session.One of the main problems was catching enough fresh mackerel for the tope session but with a few hermit or peeler crab on board the numbers could be made up with some smoothound.

The bass fishing stared off in june with a resonable supply of live sandeels although they were a little on the small side some times needing two on the hook,still small eels were better than no eels the best fish of the summer was 8lbs but the best bass of the year came up in october at 13.5lbs on a squid bait fished on the bottom .The majority of the bass were 3to 5lb with the odd 6/7lb one thrown in for good measure,numbers were`nt fantastic but most trips we got into double figures ,with pollack and rays to help the cate rate.

During high summer between the half day trips i do for the holiday makers we had some excellent plaice fishing with the best day boating 20 good fish to 5lb the smallest being 2lb that day, there would also be late bream,rays and good old wrasse to past the time of day.There was a good showing of trigger fish this year with alot coming out the harbour i think the best one was around 3lb caught by Dingly Dale along with some nice gilt head bream the harbour fished very well on the windy summer days when we could not get to the open sea with 12 plus species coming to the net.The inshore wrecks produced the usual congers up to 50lb which was a welcome change from macherel fishing and the odd summer cod and pollack showed . With the bonus of a reletively short steaming time some of the closer wrecks paid off for a bit of sport.

The 2009 season has got off to a good start,with better than average weather the offshore banks were access able producing regular supplies of blonde rays,our best fish went 28lbs caught by a young Australian mike who thought they only had big fish in oz half an hour later he announced that was some fish .All the rays we caught this spring went back unharmed and hopefully they are still there growing for later in the year.
The smoothounds turned up right on cue being caught in good numbers on crab but also a good few falling to squid baits,good fish are around 12/16lb mark with the very occasional 20lb one coming to the net.
Finally the fantastic black bream showed up a little early breaking the monotony of spring plaice fishing,the bream have been steady on the right tides with fish to 4lb on squid and regular catches in excess of 40 fish.As we move towards may we will looking and hoping for the first of the selsey tope there have been some caught allready but not in numbers fingers crossed this season could be a great one with lots of large fish.